Author: dispatchtimes news

A new study in Translational Psychiatry suggests adults with ADHD exhibit stronger, longer-lasting patterns in brain activity than their neurotypical peers, with these patterns linked to the severity of ADHD symptoms across both groups. The researchers propose that ADHD symptoms may reflect individual differences in where each person’s brain operates on a spectrum between order and disorder. ADHD is characterised by difficulties such as inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity, but symptoms vary widely from person to person. While scientists have long studied brain activity in ADHD, less is known about how brain patterns relate to symptom severity across both diagnosed and…

A preregistered experiment reported in Scientific Reports has found that the public’s endorsement of a claim linking Tylenol use in pregnancy to autism shifts only modestly with different phrasings, while political allegiance proved a stronger predictor than the exact wording. The study, led by Julie S. Downs of Carnegie Mellon University, followed a White House briefing in September 2025 during which President Donald Trump suggested acetaminophen use in pregnancy “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism.” In public health communication, researchers distinguish between correlation and causation, a divide that often narrows when scientific findings are presented to…

A small Italian-led group education programme designed to deliver sexual education for autistic teenagers has shown promising results, suggesting peer-based learning can raise knowledge about sex while reducing inappropriate behaviours. The findings, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, come from a study led by Giulia Giovagnoli and colleagues at Centro Aita in Rome and involved 17 boys aged 12 to 18 with autism but without an intellectual disability. Autism is a developmental condition characterised by restricted interests and difficulties with social communication. Despite typical physical puberty and desires for romantic and sexual relationships, autistic youths often struggle with social…

A new study suggests that fathers who hold traditional beliefs about masculinity experience sharper drops in testosterone when caring for preschool-aged children, challenging the idea that traditional manhood is allied with higher hormone levels. The research, published in Hormones and Behavior, indicates that while baseline testosterone is not tied to men’s beliefs about gender roles, the degree of testosterone change during solo caregiving relates to traditional masculinity ideology. The study frames testosterone as a fluid response to social situations, not a fixed measure of masculinity. Lead author Patty X. Kuo, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and director…

A new international study examining parenting practices and young children’s behaviour across 14 countries has found that mothers who report more frequent shouting, physical punishment or withdrawal of privileges also report more behavioural and emotional difficulties in their toddlers. The research links these disciplinary methods to both outward-directed problems such as aggression and inward-directed issues like anxiety. The study, conducted with mothers and their toddlers as part of the Joint Effort Toddler Temperament Consortium, looked at five disciplinary techniques: telling a child to reflect on their actions, shouting or swearing, spanking or hitting, withdrawing privileges, and separating the child through…

A new neuroimaging study published in eLife reveals that large language models process sentence meaning differently from the human brain when word order, not vocabulary, drives interpretation. The Melbourne-led team found that human brain activity aligns more closely with computational models that explicitly track grammatical roles—such as who is performing an action and who is receiving it—than with standard transformer representations. Humans do not merely sum word meanings when parsing a sentence. Instead, the brain also tracks syntax and semantic roles to distinguish similar phrases, such as “the dog bit the man” and “the man bit the dog,” despite identical…

A new international study suggests that delaying sexual debut until later in life is associated with a lower risk of depression in adulthood, with much of this protective effect explained by higher educational achievement and greater household income. The research, conducted by Kaifa Tang and colleagues at the Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, combines observational data with genetic analysis to explore the link. It has been published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Depression is a common mental health condition influenced by a mix of biological, environmental and social factors. Economic hardship, including low household income and…

A study into sustained conversational misinformation pressure on large language models found that, when the same false statement was repeatedly fed into a dialogue, the models for some time affirmed it in a fraction of responses. The research tested seven models and tracked how fallibility, persuadability and correctability evolved across conversations, with the findings published in Scientific Reports. Lead author Jordan Rodriguez of the University of Arizona outlined the aim of probing how models respond under continuous misinformation, rather than in a single interaction. The researchers framed their inquiry around three qualities: fallibility (the tendency to accept falsehoods under pressure),…

A large international study published in Nature Human Behaviour has found that common DNA variations are linked to toddler temperament in the first three years of life, with genetic patterns that overlap with adult personality, attention‑deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism. The research was led by Anja Hollowell of Birkbeck, University of London, and senior author Angelica Ronald of the University of Surrey, and drew on data from several European cohorts. Temperament describes early‑developing personality traits that shape how a child reacts to their surroundings. The study focuses on four main traits: emotionality, activity, shyness and sociability. Emotionality measures how intensely…

A Taiwanese study published in Autism Research suggests that autistic teenagers’ quality of life is more closely tied to their inner sense of social capability and experience of social anxiety than to observable social behaviours. The research, conducted by Hui-Jen Shyu and Mei-Hui Tseng of National Taiwan University alongside Yu-Wei Ryan Chen of the University of Sydney, involved 117 autistic adolescents in mainstream classes with no intellectual disabilities. The researchers challenged the conventional emphasis in schools and clinics on teaching specific social behaviours. They argued that while educational programmes often aim to improve observable social skills, the teenagers’ inner emotional…